UConn coach Geno Auriemma reflects on 30 years of winning

UConn head coach Geno Auriemma and guard Moriah Jefferson look on during the top-ranked Huskies’ 97-57 win over Kansas State on Monday night.

UConn head coach Geno Auriemma and guard Moriah Jefferson look on during the top-ranked Huskies’ 97-57 win over Kansas State on Monday night.

Photo: Jessica Hill — The Associated Press

Photo: Jessica Hill — The Associated Press

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UConn head coach Geno Auriemma and guard Moriah Jefferson look on during the top-ranked Huskies’ 97-57 win over Kansas State on Monday night.

UConn head coach Geno Auriemma and guard Moriah Jefferson look on during the top-ranked Huskies’ 97-57 win over Kansas State on Monday night.

Photo: Jessica Hill — The Associated Press

UConn coach Geno Auriemma reflects on 30 years of winning

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HARTFORD >> There are times when Geno Auriemma walks inside the XL Center or Gampel Pavilion, gazes up at the championship banners and can’t help but shake his head in disbelief.

So when Auriemma led his top-ranked Huskies against Kansas State on the 30th anniversary of his first game — and first victory — it was inevitable he was going to take a trip down memory lane.

“How much has happened in the last 30 years and how much things have changed since that first game,” Auriemma said after the 97-57 win on Monday. “Being on a bus to New Rochelle, I am trying to get everybody’s meal money together so we could all eat something better than a sandwich.

“Winning that game (73-67 at Iona) and winning the next six games, to those kids who were on that team, they had the same feeling as the team that won 90 in a row. For them, they never experienced anything like that, so I think back to those days.”

Before Auriemma’s arrival, the Huskies never won more than two games in a row to start a season. Yet they ripped off seven in a row in 1985. The following year UConn posted just the second winning season in program history. By the time the freshmen on Auriemma’s first team were seniors, he had the program in the NCAA tournament.

Never did Auriemma imagine he would lead the Huskies to 10 national titles and seven of the 14 longest winning streaks in Division I history. UConn’s current win streak sits at 40.

“Somebody sent me something about what has happened in the last 30 years, how much we have helped change the sport of women’s college basketball,” Auriemma said. “If I had known 30 years ago that was what was going to happen, I probably would have enjoyed it more over the past 30 years. I should really enjoy this, because 30 years from now our program is going to be legendary.

“We are just trying to have a winning record, and it’s hard to think back to what you were thinking when all you were trying to do was figure out a way to get a win. Now wins are taken for granted.”

Against the Wildcats, UConn had starters from Texas, Nevada, Illinois, Ontario and New York while the top two reserves were from California and Missouri. It was a far cry from the 1985-86 season when nine of the 12 players hailed from New England, New York, New Jersey or Pennsylvania.

Until the arrival of North Carolina native Shea Ralph and precocious Russian Svetlana Abrosimova in 1996 and 1997, it would have been a relatively short car ride to visit the hometowns of the players atop UConn’s career scoring charts. Now the leader is Georgia’s Maya Moore. California natives Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis and Diana Taurasi rank third and sixth, West Virginia’s Renee Montgomery checks in at No. 10 while players from Florida (Tiffany Hayes), Colorado (Ann Strother) and Ohio (Barbara Turner) are in the top 20.

“You would be hard pressed to look back and figure out what it was like back then and how difficult it was to be a basketball player at UConn 30 years ago,” Auriemma said. “Those kids, I have a lot of admiration for them because they came here and there wasn’t really a whole lot that we could offer them and yet they still came. I am forever grateful to them for coming.

“Now they are a bunch of spoiled brats because they have everything. Of course they are going to come now, but back then it took a lot of guts to come here because you were being recruited by a lot of really good schools. It’s not like you didn’t have a choice, you couldn’t go anywhere else. That is the biggest, craziest story ever.”